Olympic badminton players charged with trying to lose their games

London 2012: Badminton World Federation acts after farcical matches in which eight women's doubles competitors from China, South Korea and Indonesia appeared to play poorly on purpose

Olympic badminton head referee Torsten Berg issues a black card to both teams during a doubles match between South Korea and Indonesia. He later rescinded the disqualification but the four players, and four from an earlier match, have been charged with failing to play to the best of their abilities. Photograph: Andres Leighton/AP

Eight badminton players at the London 2012 Olympic Games have been charged with trying to throw their matches after a spectacle during which spectators booed teams for apparently deliberate errors.

The Badminton World Federation said it had charged four pairs of female Olympic doubles players with not using their best efforts to win a match. They are a Chinese team, two teams from South Korea and one team from Indonesia.

Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli, the Chinese top seeds, and their South Korean rivals Jung Kyung-eun and Kim Ha-na were booed by spectators.

The Korean pair won the match 21-14 21-11. The longest rally in the first game was four strokes.

Later, another Korean pair were playing against an Indonesian side when the same referee, Thorsten Berg, threatened the players with disqualification because of their behaviour. In that game Ha Jung-eun and Kim Min-jung were up against the Indonesian pairing of Meiliana Juahari and Greysia Polii.

The Koreans eventually won by two sets to one.

All sides had already qualified for the next round and the farcical scenes appeared to be an attempt by teams to manipulate which team they will have to face.

Yu defended her performance after the match, saying she wanted to ease up ahead of the knockout phase. "Actually, these opponents really were strong. This is the first time we've played them and tomorrow it's the knockout rounds, so we've already qualified and we wanted to have more energy for the knockout rounds.

"Really, it's not necessary to go out hard again when the knockout rounds are tomorrow."

Paisan Rangsikitpho, a member of the Badminton World Federation's technical committee, said after the controversial matches that the governing body was aware of what had happened. "We will have a real discussion tonight to see what has happened, but I have to get all the facts."

Petya Nedelcheva, the Bulgarian women's singles 15th seed, who was playing on an adjacent court at the time of the first incident, was forthright in her general criticism of China. "China control everything," she said. "I don't know who controlled the match to lose but if it is China again, they did it so many times last year, they didn't play against each other in 20 matches. They do what they want."

Nedelcheva's comments are supported by figures compiled by online magazine Badzine earlier this year showing that of the 99 all-Chinese matches played in major tournaments in 2011, 20 were walkovers.